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Joshua Expeditions bridges gap between travelers and agencies via KeepTrax Travel

Tour group Joshua Expeditions is one of several travel agencies leveraging new mobile application KeepTrax Travel, which allows marketers to provide a branded experience for their clients that tracks places visited and photos taken, compiling them into a travelogue.

Travel professionals will be able to offer a private app for their clients, using the technology to curate all of the content and photos captured into a concise format. This allows agencies and tour operators to interact with travelers before and after their trips, widening the opportunity to build long-lasting customer relationships via mobile.

?KeepTrax offers travel professionals (travel agencies, tour operators, media companies, destination management companies, and even suppliers such as airlines, hoteliers, etc.) a way to engage with their clients that?s not been possible before,? said Kedar Benegal, CEO and founder of KeepTrax Inc., Irving, TX. ?By delivering the KeepTrax journaling solutions, travel professionals are now relevant in-trip and also after the trip (because the act of recalling and sharing trip details involves a return to the travel professional?s app or site). 

?Through this increased engagement with their clients, travel professionals are able to develop stronger relationships, better understand customer needs and wants, and increase the lifetime value of that customer.?

Mobile travel agency
KeepTrax can essentially function as a mobile travel agency as well as a scrapbook once the user?s trip is completed. A Travelogue will be compiled at its conclusion, including photos, pins, comments and other items, all organized for easy viewing and sharing.

?Sharing is one of our newest and most revolutionary features,? Mr. Benegal said. ?KeepTrax now allows travelers to share entire journeys and experiences with friends and family ? either in real time or after the trip is complete. 

?Details such as pins, photos, comments and other location visit-oriented views can be shared, with the traveler fully controlling what is shared, how it is shared, and for how long (auto share expiration feature included). We?re getting very strong traction with this feature ? not surprising we?re learning that people have an inherent need to share their experiences.?

An mcommerce aspect also exists within the app, as agencies may offer customers options to buy related services and products, such as a hard copy of their travel diaries.

Users will also receive a ?Daily Snapshot? email, showcasing their day?s summary of activities such as photos taken and locations visited. For users who want to share their travel escapades, they may limit the duration of their shareable content from one hour up to 14 days.

More travel companions
KeepTrax is not the only company offering mobile travel companions to consumers, many of whom seldom travel without their smartphones and tablets.

This past February, TripAdvisor ramped up to become an extended companion for its customers and stand out from the growing sector of travel marketers by acquiring journaling mobile application Rove, which enables users to log their movements based on GPS coordinates and other data (see story).

Joshua Expeditions, an agency specializing in student and group travel, is among the first to leverage KeepTrax Travel. However, with the commerce and marketing opportunities the app offers, a slew of other travel brands will likely follow.

?KeepTrax?s patent-pending technology addresses critical needs in the areas of travel journaling and experience curation,? Mr. Benegal said. ?We believe people have an emotional and a practical connection with the places they visit, but before KeepTrax, the process of travel journaling was highly manual and tedious. 

?With KeepTrax, travelers are able to easily secure rich digital journals of the places they visit, eliminating the time and anxiety associated with post-travel scrapbooking, journaling and recall. By doing the ?heavy lifting? of automatically dropping location pins and attaching photos and other visit context, all in a battery-friendly manner, KeepTrax delivers a value not available in the market today.?

Final Take
Alex Samuely is an editorial assistant on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York